After a long journey home from California, we're perfectly aligned with Zurich's runway 14. With landing checklists complete, we take a moment to soak in the breathtaking view from the cockpit. Autumn has arrived in full, painting the landscape in warm, earthy tones. The majestic Alps tower in the background, while the colorful patchwork of forests around the airport forms a vivid, textured blanket below. Moments like these remind us of the unique beauty of our "office"—witnessing the changing seasons and landscapes from above.
There is a peculiar alchemy that occurs when you spend your working life moving between places. You begin to understand that "home" is not merely a location but a feeling that exists in the intersection of memory, geography, and light. Descending toward Zurich after eleven hours way around the globe, I'm struck by how the concept of place becomes fluid when you make your living in the sky.
We departed San Francisco yesterday evening local time or very early this morning, Swiss time or perhaps it was somewhere in between, according to my body clock. The question itself reveals something fundamental about the pilot's life: we exist in a perpetual present that stretches across meridians, always arriving yet always in transit. The body knows it's here, approaching the picturesque Swiss landscape on an October afternoon, but consciousness lags somewhere behind, scattered across the nine time zones we've traversed. This is the strange feeling probably engraved in most long-haul pilots. I wouldn't describe it as jet lag, but place lag.
Below us, autumn has transformed the landscape into something almost unrecognizable from its summer self, yet unmistakably the same. The forests blaze in shades that seem borrowed from another element entirely not earth but fire, burning slowly across the hills surrounding the airport. I've watched these same woods cycle through their seasons from this altitude: the tender greens of spring, the deep verdure of summer, and now this spectacular immolation before winter quietly arrives. There is something profound in being permitted to witness a single landscape across time in this way, from this remove.
The Alps stand as they always do, indifferent to seasons, to our comings and goings, to the delicate traceries of contrails that stitch the sky above them. They have always been essential in a pilot's life: whether as the constants by which we navigated at the beginning of the aviation era, or as the emotional anchor they have become today. When I see those peaks on the horizon, something in me settles.
What does it mean to come home when your work is departure? This is the question every pilot lives with, though we rarely speak it aloud. We are people of two worlds: the world of distance and the world of return. We spend our days in that strange space between leaving and arriving, suspended in the physics of flight, in pressurized metal moving at impossible speeds through air too thin to breathe. And then, always, there is this: the final approach, the landscape rising to meet us, the transition from motion to stillness.
The autumn light slants across the cockpit now, gilding the instrument panel, casting long shadows over the patchwork fields below. In a few moments, the wheels will touch runway 14, and this journey will be complete. But for now, aligned with the centerline, the Alps standing watch in the distance, I allow myself simply to observe this convergence—of season and place, of departure and return, of distance and home.
This is the gift of the pilot's perspective: not just to see the world from above, but to understand, in some essential way, that home is both the place you leave and the place you return to, and that the space between—the flight itself—is where you most fully exist.
About the Image
The October image captures that threshold moment between journey and arrival. Shot during the final approach as the observer pilot, the checklists are complete and the aircraft settled on its path. While being fully focused on precisely steering the aircraft towards the runway, this phase allows for brief moments to simply witness. The low autumn sun provides the defining light—casting long shadows, igniting the forests below, rendering the familiar landscape momentarily strange and beautiful. The challenge lies in capturing both the technical reality of flight and its more ephemeral qualities: the sense of perspective, of season, of homecoming.
Shot on Canon EOS R5 + RF 24-105mm F4.0 L IS USM @ 60mm, ISO 160, f/5.0, 1/640 sec
About "Behind the Image"
In my photo calendar "Up in the Sky" I get to share my favorite aviation pictures with you. This blog series will complement the product and will tell the story about the moment the picture was taken. It will also share comprehensive information about what happend on the flight deck and how the picture was created.
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